Missing College Student Lauren Spierer Is Turning Into Another Natalee Holloway

Missing Indiana University student Lauren Spierer's parents are understandably devastated by the disappearance of their daughter, but the whole thing is made even worse by the fact that they feel the group of men Spierer was out with the night she vanished are no longer cooperating with the investigation.

“We have these boys that were there that night that clammed up, shut down, lawyered up,” Spierer’s father, Robert Spierer, told Katie Couric.

The Spierer case has riveted the country after the young woman vanished without a trace one night and her mother Charlene Spierer wrote an emotional and heart-wrenching letter to the kidnappers pleading for information. This case is especially upsetting given the boys she was with may or may not know something, but either way, they aren't saying.

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In that way, it's like another case where a beautiful, vibrant young blond woman went missing. Who doesn't remember Natalee Holloway?

It's hard to imagine what it's like to be the parent of a missing child (and I don't really want to, either). The worry, the wonder, the not knowing. I think no matter what those boys said or didn't say, it wouldn't be enough for the parents.

This isn't to say they don't know something. They might. They might have take the "oath of silence" the Spierers suspect they did. But it also just might be the fact that until they know something, nothing anyone says or doesn't say would help that agony.

As a control freak, the thing I hate most in my life is the unknown. I hate it for a million small things, so if it were my daughter whose whereabouts were unknown, you better believe I would barely be able to get out of bed. Every day that Charlene Spierer gets up and fights is a day I admire her to no end. What she is going though is among the worst things in the world.

So where is her child?

Multiple false leads and remains have turned up since she vanished more than a year ago and nothing has been her. This leaves her parents with that small glimmer of hope, which is almost more torturous than anything.

The hope that never goes away is the same thing Holloway's mother has. Is she alive? And if she is: What then? What awful thing is happening to my child that prevents her from contacting me?

Parents of missing children live a special kind of torture few of us could imagine. Those boys may know nothing. They may be telling the truth. But if they do know something and are hiding it, it's unimaginably cruel.